Petrobrazi Refinery is one of the largest

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

refineries A refinery is a production facility composed of a group of chemical engineering unit processes and unit operations refining certain materials or converting raw material into products of value. Types of refineries Different types of refineries a ...

and one of the largest in

Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural and socio-economic connotations. Its eastern boundary is marked by the Ural Mountain ...

, located near

Ploiești Ploiești ( , , ), formerly spelled Ploești, is a Municipiu, city and county seat in Prahova County, Romania. Part of the historical region of Muntenia, it is located north of Bucharest. The area of Ploiești is around , and it borders the Ble ...

Prahova County Prahova County () is a county (județ) of Romania, in the Historical regions of Romania, historical region Muntenia, with the capital city at Ploiești. Demographics In 2011, it had a population of 762,886 and the population density was 161/k ...

having as a main activity the processing of Romanian oil but also has a separate unit specialised in processing chemical products. The refinery had two processing modules with a nominal capacity of 3.5 million tonnes/year each and a total capacity of 7 million tonnes/year. Now only one of the two modules is operational and has a capacity of 4.5 million tonnes/year or , 1 million tonnes larger due to an investment program from 1999 - 2000. The facility is connected by pipeline to virtually all of the

oil field A petroleum reservoir or oil and gas reservoir is a subsurface accumulation of hydrocarbons contained in porous or fractured rock formations. Such reservoirs form when kerogen (ancient plant matter) is created in surrounding rock by the prese ...

s in

and to the

Port of Constanța The Port of Constanța is located in Constanța, Romania, on the western coast of the Black Sea, from the Bosphorus Strait and from the Sulina Branch, through which the Danube river flows into the sea. It covers , of which is land and the re ...

by a pipeline with a capacity of 10,000 tonnes/day.

History

Large fires seen at the Creditul Minier Refinery

Petrobrazi was founded on 17 June 1934 by the Creditul Minier Society in a strategic industrial zone of located in Southern Romania near

. The first oil processing capacity was established in 1934 and had a processing capacity of 300,000 tonnes/year. During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, it suffered extensive damage with 75% of the refinery being destroyed. Designated as target Blue by the

USAAF The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...

for

Operation Tidal Wave Operation Tidal Wave was an air attack by bombers of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) based in Libya on nine oil refineries around Ploiești, Romania, on 1 August 1943, during World War II. It was a strategic bombing mission and part o ...

, and being the least defended refinery of Ploiești, it was heavily damaged by the resulting fires as the German firefighter teams refused to extinguish them for fear of the detonation of other

delay-action bomb A delay-action bomb is an aerial bomb designed to explode some time after impact, with the bomb's fuzes set to delay the explosion for times ranging from very brief to several weeks. Short delays are used to allow the bomb to penetrate before expl ...

s. The refinery was hit again by the USAAF in 1944, and by the ''

Luftwaffe The Luftwaffe () was the aerial warfare, aerial-warfare branch of the before and during World War II. German Empire, Germany's military air arms during World War I, the of the Imperial German Army, Imperial Army and the of the Imperial Ge ...

'' after 23 August. Repair work began in September 1943, with financial aid received from the Romanian Ministry of Economy and the

German Government The Federal Government (, ; abbr. BReg) is the chief executive body of the Federal Republic of Germany and exercises executive power at the federal level. It consists of the Federal Chancellor and the Federal Ministers. The fundamentals o ...

. By October 1944, partial production was resumed with 530 tonnes/day being registered, though repairs continued into 1945. In 1948, following the

nationalization Nationalization (nationalisation in British English) is the process of transforming privately owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization contrasts with p ...

of Creditul Minier, the refinery was renamed to the no. 7 Refinery, and in 1956 to the Brazi Refinery. In 1962 Petrobrazi became the first modern refinery in Romania with the addition of the catalytic cracking and reforming processes. In 1965 the refinery was integrated with the Petrochemical Complex. In 1997 the state established

Petrom OMV Petrom S.A. is a Romanian integrated oil company, controlled by Austria's OMV. It is one of the largest corporations in Romania and the largest oil and gas producer in Southeast Europe. Since 2004 it is a subsidiary of OMV. With 2022 reve ...

as the national oil company also including the Petrobrazi Refinery. In 2003 the refinery becomes the first facility of its kind in Romania that has its own

cogeneration power plant Cogeneration or combined heat and power (CHP) is the use of a heat engine or power station to electricity generation, generate electricity and useful heat at the same time. Cogeneration is a more efficient use of fuel or heat, because otherwise ...

. With its nominal processing capacity of 7 million tonnes/year, Petrobrazi is the largest Romanian refinery. It is also the most efficient refinery in Romania having a

Nelson complexity index The Nelson complexity index (NCI) is a measure to compare the secondary conversion capacity of a petroleum refinery with the primary distillation capacity. The index provides an easy metric for quantifying and ranking the complexity of various ...

of 11.4. Between 2005 and 2022, OMV Petrom invested over €2bn in the Petrobrazi refinery. A third of this investment contributing to reducing environmental impact. In 2019, a Polyfuel unit was installed at the refinery. The unit is used to convert LPG and low-grade light gasoline into gasoline and diesel, with a production rate of about 50,000 tons per year. In 2023, a project worth €70 million to replace the

coker unit A coker or coker unit is an oil refinery processing unit that converts the residual oil from the vacuum distillation column into low molecular weight hydrocarbon gases, naphtha, light and heavy gas oils, and petroleum coke. The process thermally ...

s of the refinery was completed.

References

External links

*{{official website Oil and gas companies of Romania Oil refineries in Romania Companies based in Ploiești

History

See also

References

External links